#they did prescribe me a narcotic as an option but i have no intention of even considering filling it unless it becomes physically unbearable

[onlyherefortheshowmances]

TW/CW: Suicidal ideation (without intent currently).

TL/DR:  I am trying to find a doctor anywhere in the state of Pennsylvania that accepts UPMC for You (medicaid) and is willing to at least try solve to my medical mystery. Preferably a family doctor with connections to a rheumatologist and possibly neurology and/or pain management. One that will actually listen and not give up and actually care that I'm in acute pain. I feel like my own body is trying to kill me. I have for a month or more. 

I want every single blood test you can do on a person. Every possible imaging study you can do. A sleep study. Another Holter monitor. LITERRALLY EVERYTHING because I am so tired of 'try this, try this' I want to know for sure exactly what is causing this.

At this point I just need a single doctor to either tell me I'm dying (which is what it feels like is happening) or one to tell me what's actually wrong and causing all this and how we can actually treat it while dealing with the immediate pain.

I'm tired of going to ERs every week. I'm tired of doctor's who are more afraid of the DEA than they are of their patient's dying. Because I don't want to wake up with this pain tomorrow morning. I cannot live life like this. 

This pain and the fact that no one in the medical field (other than my PT) seems to care about it at all. This pain that my current PCP respond to "I want someone to actually figure out what's wrong with me." by saying "We don't know." as if it is not literally her job to figure that out. I went through the entire appointment saying "What about the pain I'm in right now?" And all that happened was she took me off Lyrica which had side effects I couldn't deal with and prescribed Savella instead and told me to come back in a week once I titrate up to the correct dosage. What about that week? I don't have enough meds from the ER to last until next Tuesday ma'am. I was there on Saturday and they are legally only allowed to prescribe 3 days work of narcotics. He did give me 10 days worth of flexeril for which I'm grateful, but that on its own isn't enough, and my PCP won't give me anything at all. I literally told her my previous family doc only checked my TSH level not T3 or T4 (thyroid hormones). Did she order the additional tests? Has she ordered any tests at all in fact? NO. And she keeps saying insomnia when I tell her I have to take the oxy and flexeril to be able to sleep through the night. THAT'S NOT INSOMNIA. THAT IS ME BEING IN SO MUCH PAIN THAT I CAN'T SLEEP. At my appointment today I told her that almost every morning when I wake up in excruciating pain, I wish I wouldn’t’ve woken up at all; that death feels like a better option and that that thought scared me as someone with a history of suicidal ideation and attempts, and she literally did not care an ounce.

My Rheumatologist keeps trying to give me prednisone which DOES NOT WORK! And says take 2 Aleve twice a day. If Aleve worked for my pain do you think I would have been to the emergency room FOUR times since March 16th? I wouldn't have requested to see you sooner if Aleve did anything.

Not one person has cared about my sudden onset fatigue spells that keep getting more frequent to the point I'm hesitant to drive very far unless absolutely necessary because one of these times I'm gonna actually pass out. That's probably what it'll take for the medical professionals to care. Me falling asleep while driving. I think this may be POTS, because I also get random bouts of 'benign' tachycardia at the most random times.

They just keep slapping labels on things instead of just actually checking or even asking me half the time. I'm about 80% sure I have EDS, but apparently the closest person that will even test let alone diagnose someone over the age of 18 is in Philadelphia and I'd need a referral from my Rheumatologist to see that person.

#pennsylvania #medicaid #medical care #help #doctors #Rheumatoid Arthritis #Fibromyalgia #osteoarthritis #POTS #EDS #so tired #just so so tired #lancaster pa #philadelphia #pittsburgh #harrisburg #anywhere in PA #I do not care how far the drive is

[aloeblooms]

my wisdom teeth surgery went well today!

#it took about 8 hours for the numbness to fully wear off but i napped through about half of it after getting home #i don't think there were any complications with the surgery! they said it went smoothly #also i did manage to keep my teeth!! i pestered three different people about it today to make sure i went home with them #even though they were no longer in my face #anyways i made sure to stock up on tons of soft & liquid foods beforehand. had some ensure a minute ago #and now i'm goin to town on an entire bowl of jello :3 #i made some lovely soup last night - butternut squash; sweet potato; canned pumpkin; carrots; onion; coconut milk; and bacon #plus garlic and spices and things. some fresh thyme and dried rosemary and stuff #very much looking forward to that for dinner tonight or maybe lunch tomorrow #also the loopiness of post-anaesthesia wore off pretty fast for me. like i was fully coherent in under 2 hours #and the silliest thing i said/did was #when they were walking me out to my mom's car i saw that there was a loquat tree! right there hanging where i could reach it! #with ripe loquats on it! the squirrels and birds clean off our tree before we can get to em usually #so i just. very slowly and a bit clumsily reached up and picked one before getting into the car #and my wonderfully supportive mother - after making sure i was seated & situated - went over and grabbed another one for me too #on another note. thankfully my pain seems to be well controlled so far with just high dose ibuprofen and acetaminophen! #they did prescribe me a narcotic as an option but i have no intention of even considering filling it unless it becomes physically unbearable #and nothing else will help control the pain not even otc stuff or clove oil #knock on wood! here's to a smooth & speedy recovery

[nashvillerecovery]

Choosing the Right Addiction Treatment Center in Nashville

It's easy and typical for most any business to say "We're the best!" and list all the reasons why they are better than their competitor. It's also easy to forget the purpose and culture of your business when marketing it, choosing promotion over intent. I know, because I've done it. It's easy to forget the most important aspect of helping people who are addicted to opioids - help people find an addiction treatment center that's right for them. Why Do We Spend so Much Time and Energy Spreading the Good Word About Nashville Recovery? That's easy - Only 1 of every 10 people who are addicted receive treatment. When people speak of the "opioid epidemic" they assume it's getting under control and that big strides have been made to help those in need. Sadly, we're not even close to solving this problem. There's 10-times more people who are addicted and still have not found treatment. My goal for Nashville Recovery has always been to become a trusted resource for addiction treatment information. And, if by providing free information we can help steer people into opioid recovery, even if it's at another clinic, then we have a responsibility to do so. One of the reasons we spend so much time and energy marketing Nashville Recovery is because there are still millions of people who don't know this type of recovery exists. They have no idea that Suboxone can eliminate withdrawals, allow them to continue working, keep them with their family, and start them on a road to living clean and sober for the rest of their life. Suboxone is by far the best and easiest solution for overcoming opioid addiction, and I say that from my personal experience taking Suboxone. Suboxone is a miracle and it saved my life.

My Two Week Search for an Addiction Treatment Center in January 2014

In January 2014 I was in a very bad place. I had gone to a "top 5" inpatient treatment center and was relapsing week after week, over and over again. I actually lost count as to how many times I relapsed. I felt like a total failure. I let me down, my family down, my work was suffering, my son was starting to ignore me, my wife was ready to leave... I was completely hopeless. I assumed it was my lack of willpower that was keeping me addicted to opioids. I had no idea that addiction is a disease, and that the "choice" to quit had been taken away from me the very first day I took opioids. I'm just one of the lucky ones who found a remedy taking hydrocodone, oxycodone and OxyContin. At first, narcotic pain pills solved all of my problems: Eliminated my back pain Gave me motivation Made me feel like I fit in Gave me energy (weird, right?) When I took opioids I'd get a huge boost of energy. And, I was taking over 200mg of oxycodone every day. Most people will take 5-10mg of oxy and they're ready to lay down and go to sleep. Not me. I was ready to repaint the whole house every time I took pain pills. Narcotic Pain Pills Solved All of My Problems.... Until They Didn't No matter what I tried, I could not stop taking those damn pills. I tried tapering, and would end up taking even more. I tried stopping cold turkey and would go through a couple days of withdrawals and give in. I tried drinking lots of alcohol to help with the withdrawals, but then I'd get ever more sick, and worse, I'd start desiring cocaine. Talk about a miserable circle of death. I was convinced I needed something in my system at all times to cope with life and avoid withdrawals. I couldn't imagine life WITH PILLS and I couldn't imagine life WITHOUT PILLS I was ready to get help or die. I couldn't imagine life with pills and I couldn't imagine life without pills. Every time I thought about being clean I couldn't help but feel it just wasn't an option for me. I believed in my heart I would always need something, even something small in my system every day just to maintain sanity and not go into withdrawal. I was taking an average of 225mg of oxycodone and OxyContin each day. I did that for three years, and had been taking pills for over 13 years every single day. I was the definition of the word "Addicted". Getting clean was like a mirage. Other people could do it, but not me. I felt I was different somehow. Turns out, I'm just like everyone else - Thank God. I Knew an Outpatient Addiction Treatment Center Was My Only Hope - My Last Resort I spent two weeks visiting outpatient addiction clinics in the Nashville area hoping to find one that provided what I needed to get clean and stay clean: Prescribe Suboxone Provide private therapy A friendly staff that would make me feel good about my recovery and my visits A clean, comfortable, positive atmosphere A doctor that would allow me to take Suboxone for as long as I needed to A doctor that would help me taper slowly and gradually, not abruptly Sadly, I didn't find what I was looking for back in January of 2014. Good Addiction Treatment Centers in Nashville are Finally Here This is usually the place in the article where I tout all of Nashville Recovery's benefits over the other outpatient addiction treatment centers in Nashville. Yet the truth is, there are lots of good addiction treatment centers in Middle Tennessee. Many I would recommend to anyone looking to get clean from their opioid addiction. It Doesn't Matter Where You Go - As Long as You Actually Go Like me six years ago, many people don't think or perhaps even know there's a solution for their opioid addiction. They think they're a special case, take too many pills, have used for too long and simply can't be helped. The good news is they're wrong. I won't say all outpatient addiction treatment centers in Nashville are great, but I will say that as long as you find a clinic that is state licensed, provides Suboxone and private therapy, and appear to have your best interests at heart, then you can probably get clean. The Key is Just Getting Started Don't wait - Get started today. Choose a clinic, make the appointment and get going. Even if the clinic you choose isn;t right for you, at least you're taking a step in the right direction. Once you start Suboxone you're probably going to feel a whole lot better and that should buy you some time to hunt for the perfect clinic. Taking Action is the First Step in Addiction Treatment The truth is, Nashville Recovery IS different than most other addiction treatment centers. Here's a few bullet points to help you compare us to other state licensed addiction treatment centers: We are state licensed. Most addiction treatment centers in Nashville are not state licensed. Being state licensed means we go through annual audits that ensure we are providing the most up to date guidelines and procedures for outstanding opioid recovery) We provide and promote free weekly therapy to all of our clients We are owned by people in recovery. (No one knows addiction like an addict in recovery!) We provide a very positive atmosphere and a staff that's motivational for your recovery We don't judge people. We don't care what you've done in the past. What matters is what you do right now. You've probably had enough people judge you and put you down for your addiction. What if you had a place to go where people lifted you up? Made you feel like a human being and helped you overcome a disease that is taking your life away? That's what we do. We Are Determined to Help You Succeed Nashville Recovery's staff is determined to help you succeed. We provide the education, medicines, therapy, tools, motivation and opportunity to change your life for the better. And, we stick with you for as long as needed, since everyone's path is different. You might need three months or you might need three years. Does it really matter how long it takes if it changes your life forever? We provide recovery for as long as you need it, we won't tell you when to stop or when to taper. It's totally up to you. If you would like to try Nashville Recovery, you can schedule a phone or video appointment today and begin taking Suboxone immediately. Weekly phone, video and clinic therapy is provided at no additional charge to all clients. Addiction treatment via telemedicine has made opioid recovery faster, easier and more affordable than ever before. You simply can't choose a better time to start addiction treatment then right now. Read the full article

[addictionfreedom]

Suboxone Treatment Houston

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[theconservativebrief]

Katherine Hoover gave more than 335,000 opioid painkiller prescriptions under her name from December 2002 to January 2010 — meaning the West Virginia doctor wrote about 130 prescriptions per day, assuming she worked seven days a week.

But in a new story by Corky Siemaszko at NBC News, Hoover argued she did nothing wrong. “I prescribed narcotics to people in pain. I did everything I could to help people have a better life, which I told the FBI,” Hoover said. “Every prescription I wrote was justified for the person who had gotten it.”

That contradicts court records and what others closely involved with Hoover’s clinic told NBC News. According to them, the clinic was basically a for-profit pill mill — charging $450 in cash for first-time appointments, and the doctors often didn’t even see the patients they were prescribing to.

Unlike some of the doctors and clinics that have been prosecuted during the opioid epidemic, Hoover wasn’t charged and convicted for the excess prescriptions. When the police raided her clinic in 2010 due to its excessive opioid prescribing, she went to the Bahamas (where she owns an island and reportedly hopes to start a nudist resort).

Since then, she no longer appears to be a doctor, although court records obtained by NBC News “suggest she and [her husband] have been shuttling between Michigan, Georgia, California, Florida and West Virginia for much of the last 10 years.”

Legal experts told NBC News that it would not have been difficult to extradite Hoover when she went to the Bahamas. But she was never prosecuted. One theory offered by legal experts and NBC News is the case against her may be difficult to prove — since she insists she did nothing wrong, and took steps, like requiring patients take X-rays, to provide cover for her prescriptions. Another is that she may have been a government witness. We might never know the truth.

What we do know is Hoover prescribed more opioid painkillers than anyone in West Virginia — fueling the opioid crisis in the country’s hardest-hit state. To this day, West Virginia leads all other states in drug overdose deaths: According to the latest full federal data, the state had an age-adjusted drug overdose death rate of 52 per 100,000 people in 2016. Second-worst Ohio was at 39.1, which was nearly 25 percent below West Virginia’s extraordinary rate of deaths.

This opioid epidemic was, particularly in its earlier stages, fueled in large part by doctors like Hoover, but also well-intentioned doctors who (often wrongly) thought opioids were the best way to treat pain. A previous investigation by the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia found that from 2007 to 2012, drug firms poured a total of 780 million painkillers into the state — which has a total population of about 1.8 million. America now leads the world in opioid prescriptions.

The proliferation of prescriptions not only enabled misuse by patients, but also misuse by recreational users who could buy, steal, or otherwise obtain a new supply of excess pills from friends, family, and the black market.

In recent years, the opioid epidemic has become more about illicit drugs like heroin and fentanyl, with synthetic opioids like fentanyl in particular now the leading cause of drug overdose death. But even in these cases, much of the misuse and addiction that eventually led to overdose started with painkillers; a study in Addictive Behaviors found 51.9 percent of people entering treatment for opioid use disorder in 2015 started with prescription drugs, although that was down from 84.7 percent in 2005.

Doctors like Hoover are partly to blame for this crisis. But at least in Hoover’s case, there doesn’t seem to be much remorse.

In response to sky-high prescription rates, different levels of government have taken steps to pull back opioid prescribing. You can see that in the West Virginia story, as law enforcement agencies go after prescribers and clinics accused of supplying too many of the drugs.

A common proposal, adopted by some states, has been to cap how many days opioid prescriptions can be written for acute pain, along with other restrictions for chronic pain prescriptions.

For a recent piece on America’s painkiller problem, drug policy experts told me that strict limits were not the right approach — because they might constrain prescriptions too much, and might scare way doctors from prescribing opioids at all, leaving patients who really do need the drugs without options. Stanford drug policy expert Keith Humphreys told me that strict legal limits “will cause a lot of suffering” among pain patients who won’t be able to get drugs that they genuinely need.

Instead, experts pointed to what they described as policy nudges. For example, a study published in Science in August told 388 clinicians in San Diego County, California, via a letter sent through the medical examiner, that one of the patients they had prescribed a drug to had died, while providing instructions and recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on proper opioid prescribing. It then compared the clinicians’ prescribing patterns to another 438 clinicians who had patients die but were not sent letters.

The results: Clinicians who got the letters prescribed nearly 10 percent fewer opioids than those who did not receive a letter. The letter-receiving clinicians were also less likely to start patients on opioids and less likely to give patients higher doses of opioids.

“It’s one piece of the puzzle; it’s not the end-all solution,” Jason Doctor, the lead researcher on the study, told me. “I think we’re going to need a lot of these nudges to bring prescribing down.”

Another example, cited by Humphreys: A recent study in JAMA found that simply lowering the default number for opioids prescribed in an electronic medical record system significantly cut the number of pills prescribed, even though the system still let prescribers manually increase or decrease the number of pills that were doled out.

“The idea is not to constrain clinical decision making,” Andrew Kolodny, an opioid policy expert at Brandeis University, told me, “but to make it a little harder for doctors to casually overprescribe.”

Crucially, experts also argued that these kinds of nudges have to be paired with efforts to provide non-opioid pain treatments.

“We can’t just go in and impose limits without providing a sufficient infrastructure of alternatives,” Beth Darnall, a Stanford pain psychologist, told me. “If we’re taking opioids away, we have to give people something else — information, education, support, non-opioids, it might be pharmacological strategies, it might be movement-based therapies. But the imperative is to treat pain better, not just to limit opioids.”

For more on the solutions to opioid overprescribing, read Vox’s explainer.

Original Source -> This doctor wrote 130 opioid prescriptions a day. She says she did nothing wrong.

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

[lopezdorothy70-blog]

Doctors Get Paid to Prescribe More Opioids

By Dr. Mercola

Opioid addiction is at an all-time high in the U.S. - so much so, it's been identified as a significant factor in unemployment among men,1 and opioid overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 50.2 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), of the more than 63,600 Americans who died from drug overdoses in 2016,3,4 more than 42,000 were related specifically to opioids5 - a 28 percent jump in opioid deaths from the year before.  

As if that's not disturbing enough, recent research6 suggests opioid overdose deaths are being undercounted by 20 to 35 percent, due to drug omissions on death certificates.7 In many cases, the specific drug that contributed to the death isn't listed on the death certificate, and it's quite likely that many of the general "drug deaths" are actually due to opioids specifically. According to this paper, a more accurate count would probably put the opioid-related death toll at nearly 40,000 for 2015 and closer to 50,000 for 2016.

The most common drugs involved in prescription opioid overdose deaths are methadone, oxycodone (such as OxyContin®) and hydrocodone (such as Vicodin®),8 and evidence suggests opioid makers such as Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, knew exactly what they were doing when they claimed opioids - which are chemically very similar to heroin - have an exceptionally low addiction rate when taken by people with pain.

In fact, the massive increase in opioid sales has been traced back to an orchestrated marketing plan aimed at misinforming doctors about the drug's addictive potential. Remarkably, despite widespread discussion about the dangers of opioids and the high risk of addiction, and despite updated treatment guidelines for back pain that stress nondrug interventions over pain killers, doctors are still overprescribing these drugs.

Paying Doctors Who Prescribe Opioids May Be a Significant Part of the Problem

One of the reasons for this appears to be financial. As reported by CNN, "The more opioids doctors prescribe, the more money they make."9 According to an analysis by CNN and Harvard researchers, in 2014 and 2015, hundreds of doctors received in excess of $25,000 each from opioid manufacturers, and those who prescribed the most opioids received the largest payments.

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, senior scientist at the Institute for Behavioral Health, co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative and executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing told CNN, "This is the first time we've seen this, and it's really important. It smells like doctors being bribed to sell narcotics, and that's very disturbing."

At least one doctor received more than $1 million over those two years. One of his patients, who is struggling with opioid addiction, was shocked when she discovered her doctor had received such large payments from the drugmaker. "Once I found out he was being paid, I thought, 'Was it really in my best interest, or was it in his best interest?'" she told CNN.

Dr. Michael Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health added, "I don't know if the money is causing the prescribing or the prescribing led to the money, but in either case, it's potentially a vicious cycle. It's cementing the idea for these physicians that prescribing this many opioids is creating value."

Source: CNN March 12, 2018

One-Quarter of All Doctors Prescribe Opioids to Medicare Patients and Receive Payments From Opioid Makers

To assess the link between drug company payments and prescription habits, the team reviewed data from two federal government sources - one that tracks drug company payments to doctors and another that tracks prescriptions made to Medicare patients. Of the 811,000 doctors who wrote prescriptions for Medicare recipients during 2014 and 2015, more than 200,000 prescribed opioids and received payments from the drug makers.

While a majority of them received only minor payments, ranging from $100 to $1,000, more than 31,400 of them received as much as $15,000, and nearly 4,000 of them received more than $15,000. As you'd expect with a kickback scheme, those who prescribed the most opioids received the most money. According to CNN:10

"On average, doctors whose opioid prescription volume ranked among the top 5 percent nationally received twice as much money from the opioid manufacturers, compared with doctors whose prescription volume was in the median. Doctors in the top 1 percent of opioid prescribers received on average four times as much money as the typical doctor. Doctors in the top 10th of 1 percent, on average, received nine times more money than the typical doctor."

Does Your Doctor Have a Financial Incentive to Prescribe Opioids?

While it's legal for drug companies to pay doctors for a variety of services, including speaking and consulting fees - and nearly half of all doctors get paid by drug companies each year - it's illegal for doctors to prescribe drugs in exchange for kickback payments from the manufacturer. This investigation reveals the line is thin indeed between what's legal and what's illegal. Are doctors prescribing opioids with the expectation or promise of payment?

At bare minimum, the data provides additional proof that payments influence a doctor's prescribing habits, even if it's not wholly intentional. A number of previous studies have confirmed this trend, showing that regardless of what the payments are for, when a doctor receives money from a drug company, he or she is far more likely to prescribe that company's drugs.

As noted by Dr. Daniel Carlat, a psychiatrist and former director of the Prescription Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts who writes about conflicts of interest in medicine:11 "It's not proof positive, but it's another very significant data point in the growing evidence base that marketing payments from drug companies are not good for medicine and not good for patient care. It makes me extremely concerned."

Did Fentanyl Maker Bribe Doctors to Overprescribe?

In one particularly disturbing case highlighted by CNN, a woman with Crohn's disease was prescribed Subsys, an "ultrapowerful form of fentanyl" for her abdominal pain by a pain specialist in Greenville, South Carolina. Subsys is up to 100 times more potent than morphine, and while it eliminated her pain, the drug also put her in a "zombie-like state," making her unable to care for her children. What's worse, she couldn't quit.

Skipping a day led to "uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting," and when she asked her doctor for another option, "he became belligerent," saying "it was Subsys or nothing." As it turns out, this doctor received more than $190,000 from the maker of Subsys between 2014 and 2015.

A lawsuit is now pending in which she's accusing her doctor of "setting out to 'defraud and deceive' her for 'the sole purpose of increasing prescriptions, sales and consumption of Subsys to increase ... profits.'" Incidentally, in October 2017, John Kapoor, the founder of Insys, which makes Subsys, was arrested and charged with bribing doctors to overprescribe the drug. Other Insys executives have also been arrested on racketeering charges.12

Other Research Shows Payments to Doctors Could be Fueling Opioid Epidemic

The investigation by Harvard and CNN is not the first to suggest drug company payments may be a driving factor in the opioid epidemic. According to a study13 published in August 2017, between August 2013 and December 2015, more than 375,000 non-research opioid-related payments were made to more than 68,000 physicians, totaling more than $46 million. This means 1 in 12 U.S. physicians collected payments from drug companies producing prescription opioids during those 29 months.

Here, fentanyl prescriptions, specifically, were associated with the highest payments, and many of the states struggling with the highest rates of overdose deaths, such as Indiana, Ohio and New Jersey, also had the most opioid-related payments to physicians. In other words, this study showed there's a direct link between doctors' payments and patient addiction rates and deaths.

Conflicts of Interest Abound Between Drug Makers and Government

Conflicts of interest that hurt the public also exist between drug companies and the U.S. government. As reported by STAT News,14 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had originally planned on sharing the cost of a $400 million opioid addiction research project with a dozen different drug companies. The goal of the project would be to develop new drug addiction medicines and alternative pain killers.

However, after ethics flags were raised by an advisory panel, the agency made a sudden turnabout, announcing it will not accept drug industry contributions after all. Instead, the project will be exclusively funded by taxpayers. STAT News writes:

"The agency has long pursued such partnerships on disease-specific research … Last year, the NIH announced a separate partnership on cancer immunotherapy, which relies on $55 million in funding from drug companies. On the issue of opioids, however, attitudes appear to be dramatically different - largely due to the role many pharma companies are seen to have played in the opioid crisis.

In its recommendations, the NIH advisory committee specifically cited Purdue Pharma and Mallinckrodt, two opioid manufacturers currently being sued for their opioid marketing tactics. 'There's so much controversy swirling around pharmaceuticals on the opioid issue,' said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee on health …

Cole and others … also cited the ongoing controversy involving Dr. George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a unit within the NIH. STAT reported this month that Koob had discouraged research on the impact of alcohol marketing after working with beverage industry lobbyists to fund research promoting the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption."

Could Cannabis Curb the Opioid Epidemic?

In related news, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently published an open letter to U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions, in which he urges Sessions to change his stance on cannabis, saying "Not only can cannabis work for a variety of conditions such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and pain, sometimes, it is the only thing that works … It is time for safe and regulated medical marijuana to be made available nationally."

Gupta cites research from the Rand Corporation, which found a 20 percent decline in opioid overdose deaths in states that had legalized medical marijuana. "[T]hese data suggest that medicinal marijuana could save up to 10,000 lives every year," he writes. Not only could cannabis treat the pain itself, lowering or eliminating the need for narcotics, but it can also ease symptoms associated with opioid withdrawal. There's also no risk of overdose or death using cannabis.

"[P]erhaps most important, the compounds found in cannabis can heal the diseased addict's brain, helping them break the cycle of addiction," Gupta notes, adding, "there is no other known substance that can accomplish all this. If we had to … design a medicine to help lead us out of the opioid epidemic, it would likely look very much like cannabis."

Gupta also provides an example of an individual who received virtually no pain relief from opioids, taking an estimated 40,000 pills over the course of a decade, who suddenly was nearly pain-free after a single dose of cannabis. Indeed, in addition to underestimating opioid's addictive potential, the drug's effectiveness against chronic pain has also been vastly exaggerated, further heightening the potential for addiction. As noted in a 2016 paper by the CDC:15

"Most placebo-controlled, randomized trials of opioids have lasted six weeks or less, and we are aware of no study that has compared opioid therapy with other treatments in terms of long-term (more than 1 year) outcomes related to pain, function, or quality of life.

The few randomized trials to evaluate opioid efficacy for longer than six weeks had consistently poor results. In fact, several studies have showed that use of opioids for chronic pain may actually worsen pain and functioning, possibly by potentiating pain perception …"

Treating Your Pain Without Drugs

With all the health risks associated with opioid painkillers, I strongly urge you to exhaust other options before resorting to these drugs. Following is information about nondrug remedies, dietary changes and bodywork interventions that can help you safely manage your pain.

Medical cannabis

Medical marijuana has a long history as a natural analgesic and is now legal in 29 states. You can learn more about the laws in your state on medicalmarijuana.procon.org.16

Kratom

Kratom (Mitragyna speciose) is a plant remedy that has become a popular opioid substitute.17 In August 2016, the DEA issued a notice saying it was planning to ban kratom, listing it as Schedule 1 controlled substance.

However, following massive outrage from kratom users who say opioids are their only alternative, the agency reversed its decision.18 Unfortunately, its legal status is still unstable, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is on a crusade to eliminate kratom.

Kratom is safer than an opioid for someone in serious and chronic pain. However, it's important to recognize that it is a psychoactive substance and should be used with great care. There's very little research showing how to use it safely and effectively, and it may have a very different effect from one person to the next. The other issue to address is that there are a number of different strains available with different effects.

Also, while it may be useful for weaning people off opioids, kratom is in itself addictive. So, while it appears to be a far safer alternative to opioids, it's still a powerful and potentially addictive substance. So please, do your own research before trying it.

Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN)

Naltrexone is an opiate antagonist, originally developed in the early 1960s for the treatment of opioid addiction. When taken at very low doses (LDN, available only by prescription), it triggers endorphin production, which can boost your immune function and ease pain.

Curcumin

A primary therapeutic compound identified in the spice turmeric, curcumin has been shown in more than 50 clinical studies to have potent anti-inflammatory activity. Curcumin is hard to absorb, so best results are achieved with preparations designed to improve absorption. It is very safe and you can take two to three every hour if you need to.

Astaxanthin

One of the most effective oil-soluble antioxidants known, astaxanthin has very potent anti-inflammatory properties. Higher doses are typically required for pain relief, and you may need 8 milligrams or more per day to achieve results.

Boswellia

Also known as boswellin or "Indian frankincense," this herb contains powerful anti-inflammatory properties, which have been prized for thousands of years. This is one of my personal favorites, as it worked well for many of my former rheumatoid arthritis patients.

Bromelain

This protein-digesting enzyme, found in pineapples, is a natural anti-inflammatory. It can be taken in supplement form, but eating fresh pineapple may also be helpful. Keep in mind most of the bromelain is found within the core of the pineapple, so consider eating some of the pulpy core when you consume the fruit.

Cayenne cream

Also called capsaicin cream, this spice comes from dried hot peppers. It alleviates pain by depleting your body's supply of substance P, a chemical component of nerve cells that transmit pain signals to your brain.

Cetyl myristoleate (CMO)

This oil, found in dairy butter and fish, acts as a joint lubricant and anti-inflammatory. I have used a topical preparation of CMO to relieve ganglion cysts and a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Evening primrose, black currant and borage oils

These oils contain the fatty acid gamma-linolenic acid, which is useful for treating arthritic pain.

Ginger

This herb is anti-inflammatory and offers pain relief and stomach-settling properties. Fresh ginger works well steeped in boiling water as a tea, or incorporated into fresh vegetable juice.

Dietary Changes to Fight Inflammation and Manage Your Pain

Unfortunately, physicians often fall short when attempting to effectively treat chronic pain, resorting to the only treatment they know: prescription drugs. While these drugs may bring some temporary relief, they will do nothing to resolve the underlying causes of your pain. If you suffer from chronic pain, making the following changes to your diet may bring you some relief.

Consume more animal-based omega-3 fats. Similar to the effects of anti-inflammatory pharmaceutical drugs, omega-3 fats from fish and fish oils work to directly or indirectly modulate a number of cellular activities associated with inflammation. While drugs have a powerful ability to inhibit your body's pain signals, omega-3s cause a gentle shift in cell signaling to bring about a lessened reactivity to pain.

Eating healthy seafood like anchovies or sardines, which are low in environmental toxins, or taking a high-quality supplement such as krill oil are your best options for obtaining omega-3s. DHA and EPA, the omega-3 oils contained in krill oil, have been found in many animal and clinical studies to have anti-inflammatory properties, which are beneficial for pain relief.

Radically reduce your intake of processed foods. Processed foods not only contain chemical additives and excessive amounts of sugar, but also are loaded with damaging omega-6 fats. By eating these foods, especially fried foods, you upset your body's ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty-acids, which triggers inflammation. Inflammation is a key factor in most pain.

Eliminate or radically reduce your consumption of grains and sugars. Avoiding grains and sugars, especially fructose, will lower your insulin and leptin levels. Elevated insulin and leptin levels are one of the most profound stimulators of inflammatory prostaglandin production, which contributes to pain.

While healthy individuals are advised to keep their daily fructose consumption below 25 grams from all sources, you'll want to limit your intake to 15 grams per day until your pain is reduced. Eating sugar increases your uric acid levels, which leads to chronic, low-level inflammation.

Optimize your production of vitamin D. As much as possible, regulate your vitamin D levels by regularly exposing large amounts of your skin to sunshine. If you cannot get sufficient sun exposure, taking an oral vitamin D3 supplement, along with vitamin K2 and magnesium, is highly advisable. Get your blood level tested to be sure you're within the therapeutic range of 60 to 80 ng/mL year-round.

Bodywork Methods That Reduce Pain

The following bodywork methods have also demonstrated effectiveness for pain relief and pain management.

• Acupuncture: According to The New York Times,19 an estimated 3 million American adults receive acupuncture annually, most often for the treatment of chronic pain. A study20 published in the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded acupuncture has a definite effect in reducing back and neck pain, chronic headache, osteoarthritis and shoulder pain - more so than standard pain treatment.

• Chiropractic adjustments: While previously used most often to treat back pain, chiropractic treatment addresses many other problems - including asthma, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, headaches, migraines, musculoskeletal pain, neck pain and whiplash. According to a study21 published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, patients with neck pain who used a chiropractor and/or exercise were more than twice as likely to be pain-free in 12 weeks compared to those who took medication.

• Massage therapy: Massage releases endorphins, which help induce relaxation, relieve pain and reduce levels of stress chemicals such as cortisol and noradrenaline. A systematic review and meta-analysis22 published in the journal Pain Medicine, included 60 high-quality and seven low-quality studies that looked into the use of massage for various types of pain, including bone and muscle, fibromyalgia, headache and spinal-cord pain.

The study revealed massage therapy relieves pain better than getting no treatment at all. When compared to other pain treatments like acupuncture and physical therapy, massage therapy still proved beneficial and had few side effects. In addition to relieving pain, massage therapy also improved anxiety and health-related quality of life.

• Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT): EFT continues to be one of the easiest and most effective ways to deal with acute and chronic pain. The technique is simple and can be applied in mere minutes. A study23 published in Energy Psychology examined the levels of pain in a group of 50 people attending a three-day EFT workshop, and found their pain dropped by 43 percent during the workshop.

Six weeks later, their pain levels were reported to be 42 percent lower than before the workshop. As a result of applying EFT, participants felt they had an improved sense of control and ability to cope with their chronic pain. In the video below, EFT expert Julie Schiffman, teaches you how to use EFT to address chronic pain.

[battybat-boss]

Doctors Get Paid to Prescribe More Opioids

By Dr. Mercola

Opioid addiction is at an all-time high in the U.S. - so much so, it's been identified as a significant factor in unemployment among men,1 and opioid overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 50.2 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), of the more than 63,600 Americans who died from drug overdoses in 2016,3,4 more than 42,000 were related specifically to opioids5 - a 28 percent jump in opioid deaths from the year before.  

As if that's not disturbing enough, recent research6 suggests opioid overdose deaths are being undercounted by 20 to 35 percent, due to drug omissions on death certificates.7 In many cases, the specific drug that contributed to the death isn't listed on the death certificate, and it's quite likely that many of the general "drug deaths" are actually due to opioids specifically. According to this paper, a more accurate count would probably put the opioid-related death toll at nearly 40,000 for 2015 and closer to 50,000 for 2016.

The most common drugs involved in prescription opioid overdose deaths are methadone, oxycodone (such as OxyContin®) and hydrocodone (such as Vicodin®),8 and evidence suggests opioid makers such as Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, knew exactly what they were doing when they claimed opioids - which are chemically very similar to heroin - have an exceptionally low addiction rate when taken by people with pain.

In fact, the massive increase in opioid sales has been traced back to an orchestrated marketing plan aimed at misinforming doctors about the drug's addictive potential. Remarkably, despite widespread discussion about the dangers of opioids and the high risk of addiction, and despite updated treatment guidelines for back pain that stress nondrug interventions over pain killers, doctors are still overprescribing these drugs.

Paying Doctors Who Prescribe Opioids May Be a Significant Part of the Problem

One of the reasons for this appears to be financial. As reported by CNN, "The more opioids doctors prescribe, the more money they make."9 According to an analysis by CNN and Harvard researchers, in 2014 and 2015, hundreds of doctors received in excess of $25,000 each from opioid manufacturers, and those who prescribed the most opioids received the largest payments.

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, senior scientist at the Institute for Behavioral Health, co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative and executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing told CNN, "This is the first time we've seen this, and it's really important. It smells like doctors being bribed to sell narcotics, and that's very disturbing."

At least one doctor received more than $1 million over those two years. One of his patients, who is struggling with opioid addiction, was shocked when she discovered her doctor had received such large payments from the drugmaker. "Once I found out he was being paid, I thought, 'Was it really in my best interest, or was it in his best interest?'" she told CNN.

Dr. Michael Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health added, "I don't know if the money is causing the prescribing or the prescribing led to the money, but in either case, it's potentially a vicious cycle. It's cementing the idea for these physicians that prescribing this many opioids is creating value."

Source: CNN March 12, 2018

One-Quarter of All Doctors Prescribe Opioids to Medicare Patients and Receive Payments From Opioid Makers

To assess the link between drug company payments and prescription habits, the team reviewed data from two federal government sources - one that tracks drug company payments to doctors and another that tracks prescriptions made to Medicare patients. Of the 811,000 doctors who wrote prescriptions for Medicare recipients during 2014 and 2015, more than 200,000 prescribed opioids and received payments from the drug makers.

While a majority of them received only minor payments, ranging from $100 to $1,000, more than 31,400 of them received as much as $15,000, and nearly 4,000 of them received more than $15,000. As you'd expect with a kickback scheme, those who prescribed the most opioids received the most money. According to CNN:10

"On average, doctors whose opioid prescription volume ranked among the top 5 percent nationally received twice as much money from the opioid manufacturers, compared with doctors whose prescription volume was in the median. Doctors in the top 1 percent of opioid prescribers received on average four times as much money as the typical doctor. Doctors in the top 10th of 1 percent, on average, received nine times more money than the typical doctor."

Does Your Doctor Have a Financial Incentive to Prescribe Opioids?

While it's legal for drug companies to pay doctors for a variety of services, including speaking and consulting fees - and nearly half of all doctors get paid by drug companies each year - it's illegal for doctors to prescribe drugs in exchange for kickback payments from the manufacturer. This investigation reveals the line is thin indeed between what's legal and what's illegal. Are doctors prescribing opioids with the expectation or promise of payment?

At bare minimum, the data provides additional proof that payments influence a doctor's prescribing habits, even if it's not wholly intentional. A number of previous studies have confirmed this trend, showing that regardless of what the payments are for, when a doctor receives money from a drug company, he or she is far more likely to prescribe that company's drugs.

As noted by Dr. Daniel Carlat, a psychiatrist and former director of the Prescription Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts who writes about conflicts of interest in medicine:11 "It's not proof positive, but it's another very significant data point in the growing evidence base that marketing payments from drug companies are not good for medicine and not good for patient care. It makes me extremely concerned."

Did Fentanyl Maker Bribe Doctors to Overprescribe?

In one particularly disturbing case highlighted by CNN, a woman with Crohn's disease was prescribed Subsys, an "ultrapowerful form of fentanyl" for her abdominal pain by a pain specialist in Greenville, South Carolina. Subsys is up to 100 times more potent than morphine, and while it eliminated her pain, the drug also put her in a "zombie-like state," making her unable to care for her children. What's worse, she couldn't quit.

Skipping a day led to "uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting," and when she asked her doctor for another option, "he became belligerent," saying "it was Subsys or nothing." As it turns out, this doctor received more than $190,000 from the maker of Subsys between 2014 and 2015.

A lawsuit is now pending in which she's accusing her doctor of "setting out to 'defraud and deceive' her for 'the sole purpose of increasing prescriptions, sales and consumption of Subsys to increase ... profits.'" Incidentally, in October 2017, John Kapoor, the founder of Insys, which makes Subsys, was arrested and charged with bribing doctors to overprescribe the drug. Other Insys executives have also been arrested on racketeering charges.12

Other Research Shows Payments to Doctors Could be Fueling Opioid Epidemic

The investigation by Harvard and CNN is not the first to suggest drug company payments may be a driving factor in the opioid epidemic. According to a study13 published in August 2017, between August 2013 and December 2015, more than 375,000 non-research opioid-related payments were made to more than 68,000 physicians, totaling more than $46 million. This means 1 in 12 U.S. physicians collected payments from drug companies producing prescription opioids during those 29 months.

Here, fentanyl prescriptions, specifically, were associated with the highest payments, and many of the states struggling with the highest rates of overdose deaths, such as Indiana, Ohio and New Jersey, also had the most opioid-related payments to physicians. In other words, this study showed there's a direct link between doctors' payments and patient addiction rates and deaths.

Conflicts of Interest Abound Between Drug Makers and Government

Conflicts of interest that hurt the public also exist between drug companies and the U.S. government. As reported by STAT News,14 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had originally planned on sharing the cost of a $400 million opioid addiction research project with a dozen different drug companies. The goal of the project would be to develop new drug addiction medicines and alternative pain killers.

However, after ethics flags were raised by an advisory panel, the agency made a sudden turnabout, announcing it will not accept drug industry contributions after all. Instead, the project will be exclusively funded by taxpayers. STAT News writes:

"The agency has long pursued such partnerships on disease-specific research … Last year, the NIH announced a separate partnership on cancer immunotherapy, which relies on $55 million in funding from drug companies. On the issue of opioids, however, attitudes appear to be dramatically different - largely due to the role many pharma companies are seen to have played in the opioid crisis.

In its recommendations, the NIH advisory committee specifically cited Purdue Pharma and Mallinckrodt, two opioid manufacturers currently being sued for their opioid marketing tactics. 'There's so much controversy swirling around pharmaceuticals on the opioid issue,' said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee on health …

Cole and others … also cited the ongoing controversy involving Dr. George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a unit within the NIH. STAT reported this month that Koob had discouraged research on the impact of alcohol marketing after working with beverage industry lobbyists to fund research promoting the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption."

Could Cannabis Curb the Opioid Epidemic?

In related news, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently published an open letter to U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions, in which he urges Sessions to change his stance on cannabis, saying "Not only can cannabis work for a variety of conditions such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and pain, sometimes, it is the only thing that works … It is time for safe and regulated medical marijuana to be made available nationally."

Gupta cites research from the Rand Corporation, which found a 20 percent decline in opioid overdose deaths in states that had legalized medical marijuana. "[T]hese data suggest that medicinal marijuana could save up to 10,000 lives every year," he writes. Not only could cannabis treat the pain itself, lowering or eliminating the need for narcotics, but it can also ease symptoms associated with opioid withdrawal. There's also no risk of overdose or death using cannabis.

"[P]erhaps most important, the compounds found in cannabis can heal the diseased addict's brain, helping them break the cycle of addiction," Gupta notes, adding, "there is no other known substance that can accomplish all this. If we had to … design a medicine to help lead us out of the opioid epidemic, it would likely look very much like cannabis."

Gupta also provides an example of an individual who received virtually no pain relief from opioids, taking an estimated 40,000 pills over the course of a decade, who suddenly was nearly pain-free after a single dose of cannabis. Indeed, in addition to underestimating opioid's addictive potential, the drug's effectiveness against chronic pain has also been vastly exaggerated, further heightening the potential for addiction. As noted in a 2016 paper by the CDC:15

"Most placebo-controlled, randomized trials of opioids have lasted six weeks or less, and we are aware of no study that has compared opioid therapy with other treatments in terms of long-term (more than 1 year) outcomes related to pain, function, or quality of life.

The few randomized trials to evaluate opioid efficacy for longer than six weeks had consistently poor results. In fact, several studies have showed that use of opioids for chronic pain may actually worsen pain and functioning, possibly by potentiating pain perception …"

Treating Your Pain Without Drugs

With all the health risks associated with opioid painkillers, I strongly urge you to exhaust other options before resorting to these drugs. Following is information about nondrug remedies, dietary changes and bodywork interventions that can help you safely manage your pain.

Medical cannabis

Medical marijuana has a long history as a natural analgesic and is now legal in 29 states. You can learn more about the laws in your state on medicalmarijuana.procon.org.16

Kratom

Kratom (Mitragyna speciose) is a plant remedy that has become a popular opioid substitute.17 In August 2016, the DEA issued a notice saying it was planning to ban kratom, listing it as Schedule 1 controlled substance.

However, following massive outrage from kratom users who say opioids are their only alternative, the agency reversed its decision.18 Unfortunately, its legal status is still unstable, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is on a crusade to eliminate kratom.

Kratom is safer than an opioid for someone in serious and chronic pain. However, it's important to recognize that it is a psychoactive substance and should be used with great care. There's very little research showing how to use it safely and effectively, and it may have a very different effect from one person to the next. The other issue to address is that there are a number of different strains available with different effects.

Also, while it may be useful for weaning people off opioids, kratom is in itself addictive. So, while it appears to be a far safer alternative to opioids, it's still a powerful and potentially addictive substance. So please, do your own research before trying it.

Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN)

Naltrexone is an opiate antagonist, originally developed in the early 1960s for the treatment of opioid addiction. When taken at very low doses (LDN, available only by prescription), it triggers endorphin production, which can boost your immune function and ease pain.

Curcumin

A primary therapeutic compound identified in the spice turmeric, curcumin has been shown in more than 50 clinical studies to have potent anti-inflammatory activity. Curcumin is hard to absorb, so best results are achieved with preparations designed to improve absorption. It is very safe and you can take two to three every hour if you need to.

Astaxanthin

One of the most effective oil-soluble antioxidants known, astaxanthin has very potent anti-inflammatory properties. Higher doses are typically required for pain relief, and you may need 8 milligrams or more per day to achieve results.

Boswellia

Also known as boswellin or "Indian frankincense," this herb contains powerful anti-inflammatory properties, which have been prized for thousands of years. This is one of my personal favorites, as it worked well for many of my former rheumatoid arthritis patients.

Bromelain

This protein-digesting enzyme, found in pineapples, is a natural anti-inflammatory. It can be taken in supplement form, but eating fresh pineapple may also be helpful. Keep in mind most of the bromelain is found within the core of the pineapple, so consider eating some of the pulpy core when you consume the fruit.

Cayenne cream

Also called capsaicin cream, this spice comes from dried hot peppers. It alleviates pain by depleting your body's supply of substance P, a chemical component of nerve cells that transmit pain signals to your brain.

Cetyl myristoleate (CMO)

This oil, found in dairy butter and fish, acts as a joint lubricant and anti-inflammatory. I have used a topical preparation of CMO to relieve ganglion cysts and a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Evening primrose, black currant and borage oils

These oils contain the fatty acid gamma-linolenic acid, which is useful for treating arthritic pain.

Ginger

This herb is anti-inflammatory and offers pain relief and stomach-settling properties. Fresh ginger works well steeped in boiling water as a tea, or incorporated into fresh vegetable juice.

Dietary Changes to Fight Inflammation and Manage Your Pain

Unfortunately, physicians often fall short when attempting to effectively treat chronic pain, resorting to the only treatment they know: prescription drugs. While these drugs may bring some temporary relief, they will do nothing to resolve the underlying causes of your pain. If you suffer from chronic pain, making the following changes to your diet may bring you some relief.

Consume more animal-based omega-3 fats. Similar to the effects of anti-inflammatory pharmaceutical drugs, omega-3 fats from fish and fish oils work to directly or indirectly modulate a number of cellular activities associated with inflammation. While drugs have a powerful ability to inhibit your body's pain signals, omega-3s cause a gentle shift in cell signaling to bring about a lessened reactivity to pain.

Eating healthy seafood like anchovies or sardines, which are low in environmental toxins, or taking a high-quality supplement such as krill oil are your best options for obtaining omega-3s. DHA and EPA, the omega-3 oils contained in krill oil, have been found in many animal and clinical studies to have anti-inflammatory properties, which are beneficial for pain relief.

Radically reduce your intake of processed foods. Processed foods not only contain chemical additives and excessive amounts of sugar, but also are loaded with damaging omega-6 fats. By eating these foods, especially fried foods, you upset your body's ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty-acids, which triggers inflammation. Inflammation is a key factor in most pain.

Eliminate or radically reduce your consumption of grains and sugars. Avoiding grains and sugars, especially fructose, will lower your insulin and leptin levels. Elevated insulin and leptin levels are one of the most profound stimulators of inflammatory prostaglandin production, which contributes to pain.

While healthy individuals are advised to keep their daily fructose consumption below 25 grams from all sources, you'll want to limit your intake to 15 grams per day until your pain is reduced. Eating sugar increases your uric acid levels, which leads to chronic, low-level inflammation.

Optimize your production of vitamin D. As much as possible, regulate your vitamin D levels by regularly exposing large amounts of your skin to sunshine. If you cannot get sufficient sun exposure, taking an oral vitamin D3 supplement, along with vitamin K2 and magnesium, is highly advisable. Get your blood level tested to be sure you're within the therapeutic range of 60 to 80 ng/mL year-round.

Bodywork Methods That Reduce Pain

The following bodywork methods have also demonstrated effectiveness for pain relief and pain management.

• Acupuncture: According to The New York Times,19 an estimated 3 million American adults receive acupuncture annually, most often for the treatment of chronic pain. A study20 published in the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded acupuncture has a definite effect in reducing back and neck pain, chronic headache, osteoarthritis and shoulder pain - more so than standard pain treatment.

• Chiropractic adjustments: While previously used most often to treat back pain, chiropractic treatment addresses many other problems - including asthma, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, headaches, migraines, musculoskeletal pain, neck pain and whiplash. According to a study21 published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, patients with neck pain who used a chiropractor and/or exercise were more than twice as likely to be pain-free in 12 weeks compared to those who took medication.

• Massage therapy: Massage releases endorphins, which help induce relaxation, relieve pain and reduce levels of stress chemicals such as cortisol and noradrenaline. A systematic review and meta-analysis22 published in the journal Pain Medicine, included 60 high-quality and seven low-quality studies that looked into the use of massage for various types of pain, including bone and muscle, fibromyalgia, headache and spinal-cord pain.

The study revealed massage therapy relieves pain better than getting no treatment at all. When compared to other pain treatments like acupuncture and physical therapy, massage therapy still proved beneficial and had few side effects. In addition to relieving pain, massage therapy also improved anxiety and health-related quality of life.

• Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT): EFT continues to be one of the easiest and most effective ways to deal with acute and chronic pain. The technique is simple and can be applied in mere minutes. A study23 published in Energy Psychology examined the levels of pain in a group of 50 people attending a three-day EFT workshop, and found their pain dropped by 43 percent during the workshop.

Six weeks later, their pain levels were reported to be 42 percent lower than before the workshop. As a result of applying EFT, participants felt they had an improved sense of control and ability to cope with their chronic pain. In the video below, EFT expert Julie Schiffman, teaches you how to use EFT to address chronic pain.

[healthandfitnessrecipes-blog]

Reject This From Your Doctor, It

https://healthandfitnessrecipes.com/?p=1564

By Dr. Mercola

Opioid addiction is at an all-time high in the U.S. — so much so, it's been identified as a significant factor in unemployment among men,1 and opioid overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 50.2 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), of the more than 63,600 Americans who died from drug overdoses in 2016,3,4 more than 42,000 were related specifically to opioids5 — a 28 percent jump in opioid deaths from the year before.  

As if that's not disturbing enough, recent research6 suggests opioid overdose deaths are being undercounted by 20 to 35 percent, due to drug omissions on death certificates.7 In many cases, the specific drug that contributed to the death isn't listed on the death certificate, and it's quite likely that many of the general "drug deaths" are actually due to opioids specifically. According to this paper, a more accurate count would probably put the opioid-related death toll at nearly 40,000 for 2015 and closer to 50,000 for 2016.

The most common drugs involved in prescription opioid overdose deaths are methadone, oxycodone (such as OxyContin®) and hydrocodone (such as Vicodin®),8 and evidence suggests opioid makers such as Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, knew exactly what they were doing when they claimed opioids — which are chemically very similar to heroin — have an exceptionally low addiction rate when taken by people with pain.

In fact, the massive increase in opioid sales has been traced back to an orchestrated marketing plan aimed at misinforming doctors about the drug's addictive potential. Remarkably, despite widespread discussion about the dangers of opioids and the high risk of addiction, and despite updated treatment guidelines for back pain that stress nondrug interventions over pain killers, doctors are still overprescribing these drugs.

Paying Doctors Who Prescribe Opioids May Be a Significant Part of the Problem

One of the reasons for this appears to be financial. As reported by CNN, "The more opioids doctors prescribe, the more money they make."9 According to an analysis by CNN and Harvard researchers, in 2014 and 2015, hundreds of doctors received in excess of $25,000 each from opioid manufacturers, and those who prescribed the most opioids received the largest payments.

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, senior scientist at the Institute for Behavioral Health, co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative and executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing told CNN, "This is the first time we've seen this, and it's really important. It smells like doctors being bribed to sell narcotics, and that's very disturbing."

At least one doctor received more than $1 million over those two years. One of his patients, who is struggling with opioid addiction, was shocked when she discovered her doctor had received such large payments from the drugmaker. "Once I found out he was being paid, I thought, 'Was it really in my best interest, or was it in his best interest?'" she told CNN.

Dr. Michael Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health added, "I don't know if the money is causing the prescribing or the prescribing led to the money, but in either case, it's potentially a vicious cycle. It's cementing the idea for these physicians that prescribing this many opioids is creating value."

Source: CNN March 12, 2018

One-Quarter of All Doctors Prescribe Opioids to Medicare Patients and Receive Payments From Opioid Makers

To assess the link between drug company payments and prescription habits, the team reviewed data from two federal government sources — one that tracks drug company payments to doctors and another that tracks prescriptions made to Medicare patients. Of the 811,000 doctors who wrote prescriptions for Medicare recipients during 2014 and 2015, more than 200,000 prescribed opioids and received payments from the drug makers.

While a majority of them received only minor payments, ranging from $100 to $1,000, more than 31,400 of them received as much as $15,000, and nearly 4,000 of them received more than $15,000. As you'd expect with a kickback scheme, those who prescribed the most opioids received the most money. According to CNN:10

"On average, doctors whose opioid prescription volume ranked among the top 5 percent nationally received twice as much money from the opioid manufacturers, compared with doctors whose prescription volume was in the median. Doctors in the top 1 percent of opioid prescribers received on average four times as much money as the typical doctor. Doctors in the top 10th of 1 percent, on average, received nine times more money than the typical doctor."

Does Your Doctor Have a Financial Incentive to Prescribe Opioids?

While it's legal for drug companies to pay doctors for a variety of services, including speaking and consulting fees — and nearly half of all doctors get paid by drug companies each year — it's illegal for doctors to prescribe drugs in exchange for kickback payments from the manufacturer. This investigation reveals the line is thin indeed between what's legal and what's illegal. Are doctors prescribing opioids with the expectation or promise of payment?

At bare minimum, the data provides additional proof that payments influence a doctor's prescribing habits, even if it's not wholly intentional. A number of previous studies have confirmed this trend, showing that regardless of what the payments are for, when a doctor receives money from a drug company, he or she is far more likely to prescribe that company's drugs.

As noted by Dr. Daniel Carlat, a psychiatrist and former director of the Prescription Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts who writes about conflicts of interest in medicine:11 "It's not proof positive, but it's another very significant data point in the growing evidence base that marketing payments from drug companies are not good for medicine and not good for patient care. It makes me extremely concerned."

Did Fentanyl Maker Bribe Doctors to Overprescribe?

In one particularly disturbing case highlighted by CNN, a woman with Crohn's disease was prescribed Subsys, an "ultrapowerful form of fentanyl" for her abdominal pain by a pain specialist in Greenville, South Carolina. Subsys is up to 100 times more potent than morphine, and while it eliminated her pain, the drug also put her in a "zombie-like state," making her unable to care for her children. What's worse, she couldn't quit.

Skipping a day led to "uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting," and when she asked her doctor for another option, "he became belligerent," saying "it was Subsys or nothing." As it turns out, this doctor received more than $190,000 from the maker of Subsys between 2014 and 2015.

A lawsuit is now pending in which she's accusing her doctor of "setting out to 'defraud and deceive' her for 'the sole purpose of increasing prescriptions, sales and consumption of Subsys to increase ... profits.'" Incidentally, in October 2017, John Kapoor, the founder of Insys, which makes Subsys, was arrested and charged with bribing doctors to overprescribe the drug. Other Insys executives have also been arrested on racketeering charges.12

Other Research Shows Payments to Doctors Could be Fueling Opioid Epidemic

The investigation by Harvard and CNN is not the first to suggest drug company payments may be a driving factor in the opioid epidemic. According to a study13 published in August 2017, between August 2013 and December 2015, more than 375,000 non-research opioid-related payments were made to more than 68,000 physicians, totaling more than $46 million. This means 1 in 12 U.S. physicians collected payments from drug companies producing prescription opioids during those 29 months.

Here, fentanyl prescriptions, specifically, were associated with the highest payments, and many of the states struggling with the highest rates of overdose deaths, such as Indiana, Ohio and New Jersey, also had the most opioid-related payments to physicians. In other words, this study showed there's a direct link between doctors' payments and patient addiction rates and deaths.

Conflicts of Interest Abound Between Drug Makers and Government

Conflicts of interest that hurt the public also exist between drug companies and the U.S. government. As reported by STAT News,14 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had originally planned on sharing the cost of a $400 million opioid addiction research project with a dozen different drug companies. The goal of the project would be to develop new drug addiction medicines and alternative pain killers.

However, after ethics flags were raised by an advisory panel, the agency made a sudden turnabout, announcing it will not accept drug industry contributions after all. Instead, the project will be exclusively funded by taxpayers. STAT News writes:

"The agency has long pursued such partnerships on disease-specific research … Last year, the NIH announced a separate partnership on cancer immunotherapy, which relies on $55 million in funding from drug companies. On the issue of opioids, however, attitudes appear to be dramatically different — largely due to the role many pharma companies are seen to have played in the opioid crisis.

In its recommendations, the NIH advisory committee specifically cited Purdue Pharma and Mallinckrodt, two opioid manufacturers currently being sued for their opioid marketing tactics. 'There's so much controversy swirling around pharmaceuticals on the opioid issue,' said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee on health …

Cole and others … also cited the ongoing controversy involving Dr. George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a unit within the NIH. STAT reported this month that Koob had discouraged research on the impact of alcohol marketing after working with beverage industry lobbyists to fund research promoting the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption."

Could Cannabis Curb the Opioid Epidemic?

In related news, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently published an open letter to U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions, in which he urges Sessions to change his stance on cannabis, saying "Not only can cannabis work for a variety of conditions such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and pain, sometimes, it is the only thing that works … It is time for safe and regulated medical marijuana to be made available nationally."

Gupta cites research from the Rand Corporation, which found a 20 percent decline in opioid overdose deaths in states that had legalized medical marijuana. "[T]hese data suggest that medicinal marijuana could save up to 10,000 lives every year," he writes. Not only could cannabis treat the pain itself, lowering or eliminating the need for narcotics, but it can also ease symptoms associated with opioid withdrawal. There's also no risk of overdose or death using cannabis.

"[P]erhaps most important, the compounds found in cannabis can heal the diseased addict's brain, helping them break the cycle of addiction," Gupta notes, adding, "there is no other known substance that can accomplish all this. If we had to … design a medicine to help lead us out of the opioid epidemic, it would likely look very much like cannabis."

Gupta also provides an example of an individual who received virtually no pain relief from opioids, taking an estimated 40,000 pills over the course of a decade, who suddenly was nearly pain-free after a single dose of cannabis. Indeed, in addition to underestimating opioid's addictive potential, the drug's effectiveness against chronic pain has also been vastly exaggerated, further heightening the potential for addiction. As noted in a 2016 paper by the CDC:15

"Most placebo-controlled, randomized trials of opioids have lasted six weeks or less, and we are aware of no study that has compared opioid therapy with other treatments in terms of long-term (more than 1 year) outcomes related to pain, function, or quality of life.

The few randomized trials to evaluate opioid efficacy for longer than six weeks had consistently poor results. In fact, several studies have showed that use of opioids for chronic pain may actually worsen pain and functioning, possibly by potentiating pain perception …"

Treating Your Pain Without Drugs

With all the health risks associated with opioid painkillers, I strongly urge you to exhaust other options before resorting to these drugs. Following is information about nondrug remedies, dietary changes and bodywork interventions that can help you safely manage your pain.

Medical cannabis

Medical marijuana has a long history as a natural analgesic and is now legal in 29 states. You can learn more about the laws in your state on medicalmarijuana.procon.org.16

Kratom

Kratom (Mitragyna speciose) is a plant remedy that has become a popular opioid substitute.17 In August 2016, the DEA issued a notice saying it was planning to ban kratom, listing it as Schedule 1 controlled substance.

However, following massive outrage from kratom users who say opioids are their only alternative, the agency reversed its decision.18 Unfortunately, its legal status is still unstable, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is on a crusade to eliminate kratom.

Kratom is safer than an opioid for someone in serious and chronic pain. However, it's important to recognize that it is a psychoactive substance and should be used with great care. There's very little research showing how to use it safely and effectively, and it may have a very different effect from one person to the next. The other issue to address is that there are a number of different strains available with different effects.

Also, while it may be useful for weaning people off opioids, kratom is in itself addictive. So, while it appears to be a far safer alternative to opioids, it's still a powerful and potentially addictive substance. So please, do your own research before trying it.

Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN)

Naltrexone is an opiate antagonist, originally developed in the early 1960s for the treatment of opioid addiction. When taken at very low doses (LDN, available only by prescription), it triggers endorphin production, which can boost your immune function and ease pain.

Curcumin

A primary therapeutic compound identified in the spice turmeric, curcumin has been shown in more than 50 clinical studies to have potent anti-inflammatory activity. Curcumin is hard to absorb, so best results are achieved with preparations designed to improve absorption. It is very safe and you can take two to three every hour if you need to.

Astaxanthin

One of the most effective oil-soluble antioxidants known, astaxanthin has very potent anti-inflammatory properties. Higher doses are typically required for pain relief, and you may need 8 milligrams or more per day to achieve results.

Boswellia

Also known as boswellin or "Indian frankincense," this herb contains powerful anti-inflammatory properties, which have been prized for thousands of years. This is one of my personal favorites, as it worked well for many of my former rheumatoid arthritis patients.

Bromelain

This protein-digesting enzyme, found in pineapples, is a natural anti-inflammatory. It can be taken in supplement form, but eating fresh pineapple may also be helpful. Keep in mind most of the bromelain is found within the core of the pineapple, so consider eating some of the pulpy core when you consume the fruit.

Cayenne cream

Also called capsaicin cream, this spice comes from dried hot peppers. It alleviates pain by depleting your body's supply of substance P, a chemical component of nerve cells that transmit pain signals to your brain.

Cetyl myristoleate (CMO)

This oil, found in dairy butter and fish, acts as a joint lubricant and anti-inflammatory. I have used a topical preparation of CMO to relieve ganglion cysts and a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Evening primrose, black currant and borage oils

These oils contain the fatty acid gamma-linolenic acid, which is useful for treating arthritic pain.

Ginger

This herb is anti-inflammatory and offers pain relief and stomach-settling properties. Fresh ginger works well steeped in boiling water as a tea, or incorporated into fresh vegetable juice.

Dietary Changes to Fight Inflammation and Manage Your Pain

Unfortunately, physicians often fall short when attempting to effectively treat chronic pain, resorting to the only treatment they know: prescription drugs. While these drugs may bring some temporary relief, they will do nothing to resolve the underlying causes of your pain. If you suffer from chronic pain, making the following changes to your diet may bring you some relief.

Consume more animal-based omega-3 fats. Similar to the effects of anti-inflammatory pharmaceutical drugs, omega-3 fats from fish and fish oils work to directly or indirectly modulate a number of cellular activities associated with inflammation. While drugs have a powerful ability to inhibit your body's pain signals, omega-3s cause a gentle shift in cell signaling to bring about a lessened reactivity to pain.

Eating healthy seafood like anchovies or sardines, which are low in environmental toxins, or taking a high-quality supplement such as krill oil are your best options for obtaining omega-3s. DHA and EPA, the omega-3 oils contained in krill oil, have been found in many animal and clinical studies to have anti-inflammatory properties, which are beneficial for pain relief.

Radically reduce your intake of processed foods. Processed foods not only contain chemical additives and excessive amounts of sugar, but also are loaded with damaging omega-6 fats. By eating these foods, especially fried foods, you upset your body's ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty-acids, which triggers inflammation. Inflammation is a key factor in most pain.

Eliminate or radically reduce your consumption of grains and sugars. Avoiding grains and sugars, especially fructose, will lower your insulin and leptin levels. Elevated insulin and leptin levels are one of the most profound stimulators of inflammatory prostaglandin production, which contributes to pain.

While healthy individuals are advised to keep their daily fructose consumption below 25 grams from all sources, you'll want to limit your intake to 15 grams per day until your pain is reduced. Eating sugar increases your uric acid levels, which leads to chronic, low-level inflammation.

Optimize your production of vitamin D. As much as possible, regulate your vitamin D levels by regularly exposing large amounts of your skin to sunshine. If you cannot get sufficient sun exposure, taking an oral vitamin D3 supplement, along with vitamin K2 and magnesium, is highly advisable. Get your blood level tested to be sure you're within the therapeutic range of 60 to 80 ng/mL year-round.

Bodywork Methods That Reduce Pain

The following bodywork methods have also demonstrated effectiveness for pain relief and pain management.

• Acupuncture: According to The New York Times,19 an estimated 3 million American adults receive acupuncture annually, most often for the treatment of chronic pain. A study20 published in the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded acupuncture has a definite effect in reducing back and neck pain, chronic headache, osteoarthritis and shoulder pain — more so than standard pain treatment.

• Chiropractic adjustments: While previously used most often to treat back pain, chiropractic treatment addresses many other problems — including asthma, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, headaches, migraines, musculoskeletal pain, neck pain and whiplash. According to a study21 published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, patients with neck pain who used a chiropractor and/or exercise were more than twice as likely to be pain-free in 12 weeks compared to those who took medication.

• Massage therapy: Massage releases endorphins, which help induce relaxation, relieve pain and reduce levels of stress chemicals such as cortisol and noradrenaline. A systematic review and meta-analysis22 published in the journal Pain Medicine, included 60 high-quality and seven low-quality studies that looked into the use of massage for various types of pain, including bone and muscle, fibromyalgia, headache and spinal-cord pain.

The study revealed massage therapy relieves pain better than getting no treatment at all. When compared to other pain treatments like acupuncture and physical therapy, massage therapy still proved beneficial and had few side effects. In addition to relieving pain, massage therapy also improved anxiety and health-related quality of life.

• Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT): EFT continues to be one of the easiest and most effective ways to deal with acute and chronic pain. The technique is simple and can be applied in mere minutes. A study23 published in Energy Psychology examined the levels of pain in a group of 50 people attending a three-day EFT workshop, and found their pain dropped by 43 percent during the workshop.

Six weeks later, their pain levels were reported to be 42 percent lower than before the workshop. As a result of applying EFT, participants felt they had an improved sense of control and ability to cope with their chronic pain. In the video below, EFT expert Julie Schiffman, teaches you how to use EFT to address chronic pain.

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[sherristockman]

Doctors Get Paid to Prescribe More Opioids Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola Opioid addiction is at an all-time high in the U.S. — so much so, it's been identified as a significant factor in unemployment among men,1 and opioid overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans under the age of 50.2 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), of the more than 63,600 Americans who died from drug overdoses in 2016,3,4 more than 42,000 were related specifically to opioids5 — a 28 percent jump in opioid deaths from the year before. As if that's not disturbing enough, recent research6 suggests opioid overdose deaths are being undercounted by 20 to 35 percent, due to drug omissions on death certificates.7 In many cases, the specific drug that contributed to the death isn't listed on the death certificate, and it's quite likely that many of the general "drug deaths" are actually due to opioids specifically. According to this paper, a more accurate count would probably put the opioid-related death toll at nearly 40,000 for 2015 and closer to 50,000 for 2016. The most common drugs involved in prescription opioid overdose deaths are methadone, oxycodone (such as OxyContin®) and hydrocodone (such as Vicodin®),8 and evidence suggests opioid makers such as Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, knew exactly what they were doing when they claimed opioids — which are chemically very similar to heroin — have an exceptionally low addiction rate when taken by people with pain. In fact, the massive increase in opioid sales has been traced back to an orchestrated marketing plan aimed at misinforming doctors about the drug's addictive potential. Remarkably, despite widespread discussion about the dangers of opioids and the high risk of addiction, and despite updated treatment guidelines for back pain that stress nondrug interventions over pain killers, doctors are still overprescribing these drugs. Paying Doctors Who Prescribe Opioids May Be a Significant Part of the Problem One of the reasons for this appears to be financial. As reported by CNN, "The more opioids doctors prescribe, the more money they make."9 According to an analysis by CNN and Harvard researchers, in 2014 and 2015, hundreds of doctors received in excess of $25,000 each from opioid manufacturers, and those who prescribed the most opioids received the largest payments. Dr. Andrew Kolodny, senior scientist at the Institute for Behavioral Health, co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative and executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing told CNN, "This is the first time we've seen this, and it's really important. It smells like doctors being bribed to sell narcotics, and that's very disturbing." At least one doctor received more than $1 million over those two years. One of his patients, who is struggling with opioid addiction, was shocked when she discovered her doctor had received such large payments from the drugmaker. "Once I found out he was being paid, I thought, 'Was it really in my best interest, or was it in his best interest?'" she told CNN. Dr. Michael Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health added, "I don't know if the money is causing the prescribing or the prescribing led to the money, but in either case, it's potentially a vicious cycle. It's cementing the idea for these physicians that prescribing this many opioids is creating value." Source: CNN March 12, 2018 One-Quarter of All Doctors Prescribe Opioids to Medicare Patients and Receive Payments From Opioid Makers To assess the link between drug company payments and prescription habits, the team reviewed data from two federal government sources — one that tracks drug company payments to doctors and another that tracks prescriptions made to Medicare patients. Of the 811,000 doctors who wrote prescriptions for Medicare recipients during 2014 and 2015, more than 200,000 prescribed opioids and received payments from the drug makers. While a majority of them received only minor payments, ranging from $100 to $1,000, more than 31,400 of them received as much as $15,000, and nearly 4,000 of them received more than $15,000. As you'd expect with a kickback scheme, those who prescribed the most opioids received the most money. According to CNN:10 "On average, doctors whose opioid prescription volume ranked among the top 5 percent nationally received twice as much money from the opioid manufacturers, compared with doctors whose prescription volume was in the median. Doctors in the top 1 percent of opioid prescribers received on average four times as much money as the typical doctor. Doctors in the top 10th of 1 percent, on average, received nine times more money than the typical doctor." Does Your Doctor Have a Financial Incentive to Prescribe Opioids? While it's legal for drug companies to pay doctors for a variety of services, including speaking and consulting fees — and nearly half of all doctors get paid by drug companies each year — it's illegal for doctors to prescribe drugs in exchange for kickback payments from the manufacturer. This investigation reveals the line is thin indeed between what's legal and what's illegal. Are doctors prescribing opioids with the expectation or promise of payment? At bare minimum, the data provides additional proof that payments influence a doctor's prescribing habits, even if it's not wholly intentional. A number of previous studies have confirmed this trend, showing that regardless of what the payments are for, when a doctor receives money from a drug company, he or she is far more likely to prescribe that company's drugs. As noted by Dr. Daniel Carlat, a psychiatrist and former director of the Prescription Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts who writes about conflicts of interest in medicine:11 "It's not proof positive, but it's another very significant data point in the growing evidence base that marketing payments from drug companies are not good for medicine and not good for patient care. It makes me extremely concerned." Did Fentanyl Maker Bribe Doctors to Overprescribe? In one particularly disturbing case highlighted by CNN, a woman with Crohn's disease was prescribed Subsys, an "ultrapowerful form of fentanyl" for her abdominal pain by a pain specialist in Greenville, South Carolina. Subsys is up to 100 times more potent than morphine, and while it eliminated her pain, the drug also put her in a "zombie-like state," making her unable to care for her children. What's worse, she couldn't quit. Skipping a day led to "uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting," and when she asked her doctor for another option, "he became belligerent," saying "it was Subsys or nothing." As it turns out, this doctor received more than $190,000 from the maker of Subsys between 2014 and 2015. A lawsuit is now pending in which she's accusing her doctor of "setting out to 'defraud and deceive' her for 'the sole purpose of increasing prescriptions, sales and consumption of Subsys to increase ... profits.'" Incidentally, in October 2017, John Kapoor, the founder of Insys, which makes Subsys, was arrested and charged with bribing doctors to overprescribe the drug. Other Insys executives have also been arrested on racketeering charges.12 Other Research Shows Payments to Doctors Could be Fueling Opioid Epidemic The investigation by Harvard and CNN is not the first to suggest drug company payments may be a driving factor in the opioid epidemic. According to a study13 published in August 2017, between August 2013 and December 2015, more than 375,000 non-research opioid-related payments were made to more than 68,000 physicians, totaling more than $46 million. This means 1 in 12 U.S. physicians collected payments from drug companies producing prescription opioids during those 29 months. Here, fentanyl prescriptions, specifically, were associated with the highest payments, and many of the states struggling with the highest rates of overdose deaths, such as Indiana, Ohio and New Jersey, also had the most opioid-related payments to physicians. In other words, this study showed there's a direct link between doctors' payments and patient addiction rates and deaths. Conflicts of Interest Abound Between Drug Makers and Government Conflicts of interest that hurt the public also exist between drug companies and the U.S. government. As reported by STAT News,14 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had originally planned on sharing the cost of a $400 million opioid addiction research project with a dozen different drug companies. The goal of the project would be to develop new drug addiction medicines and alternative pain killers. However, after ethics flags were raised by an advisory panel, the agency made a sudden turnabout, announcing it will not accept drug industry contributions after all. Instead, the project will be exclusively funded by taxpayers. STAT News writes: "The agency has long pursued such partnerships on disease-specific research … Last year, the NIH announced a separate partnership on cancer immunotherapy, which relies on $55 million in funding from drug companies. On the issue of opioids, however, attitudes appear to be dramatically different — largely due to the role many pharma companies are seen to have played in the opioid crisis. In its recommendations, the NIH advisory committee specifically cited Purdue Pharma and Mallinckrodt, two opioid manufacturers currently being sued for their opioid marketing tactics. 'There's so much controversy swirling around pharmaceuticals on the opioid issue,' said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee on health … Cole and others … also cited the ongoing controversy involving Dr. George Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a unit within the NIH. STAT reported this month that Koob had discouraged research on the impact of alcohol marketing after working with beverage industry lobbyists to fund research promoting the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption." Could Cannabis Curb the Opioid Epidemic? In related news, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently published an open letter to U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions, in which he urges Sessions to change his stance on cannabis, saying "Not only can cannabis work for a variety of conditions such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and pain, sometimes, it is the only thing that works … It is time for safe and regulated medical marijuana to be made available nationally." Gupta cites research from the Rand Corporation, which found a 20 percent decline in opioid overdose deaths in states that had legalized medical marijuana. "[T]hese data suggest that medicinal marijuana could save up to 10,000 lives every year," he writes. Not only could cannabis treat the pain itself, lowering or eliminating the need for narcotics, but it can also ease symptoms associated with opioid withdrawal. There's also no risk of overdose or death using cannabis. "[P]erhaps most important, the compounds found in cannabis can heal the diseased addict's brain, helping them break the cycle of addiction," Gupta notes, adding, "there is no other known substance that can accomplish all this. If we had to … design a medicine to help lead us out of the opioid epidemic, it would likely look very much like cannabis." Gupta also provides an example of an individual who received virtually no pain relief from opioids, taking an estimated 40,000 pills over the course of a decade, who suddenly was nearly pain-free after a single dose of cannabis. Indeed, in addition to underestimating opioid's addictive potential, the drug's effectiveness against chronic pain has also been vastly exaggerated, further heightening the potential for addiction. As noted in a 2016 paper by the CDC:15 "Most placebo-controlled, randomized trials of opioids have lasted six weeks or less, and we are aware of no study that has compared opioid therapy with other treatments in terms of long-term (more than 1 year) outcomes related to pain, function, or quality of life. The few randomized trials to evaluate opioid efficacy for longer than six weeks had consistently poor results. In fact, several studies have showed that use of opioids for chronic pain may actually worsen pain and functioning, possibly by potentiating pain perception …" Treating Your Pain Without Drugs With all the health risks associated with opioid painkillers, I strongly urge you to exhaust other options before resorting to these drugs. Following is information about nondrug remedies, dietary changes and bodywork interventions that can help you safely manage your pain. Medical cannabis Medical marijuana has a long history as a natural analgesic and is now legal in 29 states. You can learn more about the laws in your state on medicalmarijuana.procon.org.16 Kratom Kratom (Mitragyna speciose) is a plant remedy that has become a popular opioid substitute.17 In August 2016, the DEA issued a notice saying it was planning to ban kratom, listing it as Schedule 1 controlled substance. However, following massive outrage from kratom users who say opioids are their only alternative, the agency reversed its decision.18 Unfortunately, its legal status is still unstable, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is on a crusade to eliminate kratom. Kratom is safer than an opioid for someone in serious and chronic pain. However, it's important to recognize that it is a psychoactive substance and should be used with great care. There's very little research showing how to use it safely and effectively, and it may have a very different effect from one person to the next. The other issue to address is that there are a number of different strains available with different effects. Also, while it may be useful for weaning people off opioids, kratom is in itself addictive. So, while it appears to be a far safer alternative to opioids, it's still a powerful and potentially addictive substance. So please, do your own research before trying it. Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Naltrexone is an opiate antagonist, originally developed in the early 1960s for the treatment of opioid addiction. When taken at very low doses (LDN, available only by prescription), it triggers endorphin production, which can boost your immune function and ease pain. Curcumin A primary therapeutic compound identified in the spice turmeric, curcumin has been shown in more than 50 clinical studies to have potent anti-inflammatory activity. Curcumin is hard to absorb, so best results are achieved with preparations designed to improve absorption. It is very safe and you can take two to three every hour if you need to. Astaxanthin One of the most effective oil-soluble antioxidants known, astaxanthin has very potent anti-inflammatory properties. Higher doses are typically required for pain relief, and you may need 8 milligrams or more per day to achieve results. Boswellia Also known as boswellin or "Indian frankincense," this herb contains powerful anti-inflammatory properties, which have been prized for thousands of years. This is one of my personal favorites, as it worked well for many of my former rheumatoid arthritis patients. Bromelain This protein-digesting enzyme, found in pineapples, is a natural anti-inflammatory. It can be taken in supplement form, but eating fresh pineapple may also be helpful. Keep in mind most of the bromelain is found within the core of the pineapple, so consider eating some of the pulpy core when you consume the fruit. Cayenne cream Also called capsaicin cream, this spice comes from dried hot peppers. It alleviates pain by depleting your body's supply of substance P, a chemical component of nerve cells that transmit pain signals to your brain. Cetyl myristoleate (CMO) This oil, found in dairy butter and fish, acts as a joint lubricant and anti-inflammatory. I have used a topical preparation of CMO to relieve ganglion cysts and a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome. Evening primrose, black currant and borage oils These oils contain the fatty acid gamma-linolenic acid, which is useful for treating arthritic pain. Ginger This herb is anti-inflammatory and offers pain relief and stomach-settling properties. Fresh ginger works well steeped in boiling water as a tea, or incorporated into fresh vegetable juice. Dietary Changes to Fight Inflammation and Manage Your Pain Unfortunately, physicians often fall short when attempting to effectively treat chronic pain, resorting to the only treatment they know: prescription drugs. While these drugs may bring some temporary relief, they will do nothing to resolve the underlying causes of your pain. If you suffer from chronic pain, making the following changes to your diet may bring you some relief. Consume more animal-based omega-3 fats. Similar to the effects of anti-inflammatory pharmaceutical drugs, omega-3 fats from fish and fish oils work to directly or indirectly modulate a number of cellular activities associated with inflammation. While drugs have a powerful ability to inhibit your body's pain signals, omega-3s cause a gentle shift in cell signaling to bring about a lessened reactivity to pain. Eating healthy seafood like anchovies or sardines, which are low in environmental toxins, or taking a high-quality supplement such as krill oil are your best options for obtaining omega-3s. DHA and EPA, the omega-3 oils contained in krill oil, have been found in many animal and clinical studies to have anti-inflammatory properties, which are beneficial for pain relief. Radically reduce your intake of processed foods. Processed foods not only contain chemical additives and excessive amounts of sugar, but also are loaded with damaging omega-6 fats. By eating these foods, especially fried foods, you upset your body's ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty-acids, which triggers inflammation. Inflammation is a key factor in most pain. Eliminate or radically reduce your consumption of grains and sugars. Avoiding grains and sugars, especially fructose, will lower your insulin and leptin levels. Elevated insulin and leptin levels are one of the most profound stimulators of inflammatory prostaglandin production, which contributes to pain. While healthy individuals are advised to keep their daily fructose consumption below 25 grams from all sources, you'll want to limit your intake to 15 grams per day until your pain is reduced. Eating sugar increases your uric acid levels, which leads to chronic, low-level inflammation. Optimize your production of vitamin D. As much as possible, regulate your vitamin D levels by regularly exposing large amounts of your skin to sunshine. If you cannot get sufficient sun exposure, taking an oral vitamin D3 supplement, along with vitamin K2 and magnesium, is highly advisable. Get your blood level tested to be sure you're within the therapeutic range of 60 to 80 ng/mL year-round. Bodywork Methods That Reduce Pain The following bodywork methods have also demonstrated effectiveness for pain relief and pain management. • Acupuncture: According to The New York Times,19 an estimated 3 million American adults receive acupuncture annually, most often for the treatment of chronic pain. A study20 published in the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded acupuncture has a definite effect in reducing back and neck pain, chronic headache, osteoarthritis and shoulder pain — more so than standard pain treatment. • Chiropractic adjustments: While previously used most often to treat back pain, chiropractic treatment addresses many other problems — including asthma, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, headaches, migraines, musculoskeletal pain, neck pain and whiplash. According to a study21 published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, patients with neck pain who used a chiropractor and/or exercise were more than twice as likely to be pain-free in 12 weeks compared to those who took medication. • Massage therapy: Massage releases endorphins, which help induce relaxation, relieve pain and reduce levels of stress chemicals such as cortisol and noradrenaline. A systematic review and meta-analysis22 published in the journal Pain Medicine, included 60 high-quality and seven low-quality studies that looked into the use of massage for various types of pain, including bone and muscle, fibromyalgia, headache and spinal-cord pain. The study revealed massage therapy relieves pain better than getting no treatment at all. When compared to other pain treatments like acupuncture and physical therapy, massage therapy still proved beneficial and had few side effects. In addition to relieving pain, massage therapy also improved anxiety and health-related quality of life. • Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT): EFT continues to be one of the easiest and most effective ways to deal with acute and chronic pain. The technique is simple and can be applied in mere minutes. A study23 published in Energy Psychology examined the levels of pain in a group of 50 people attending a three-day EFT workshop, and found their pain dropped by 43 percent during the workshop. Six weeks later, their pain levels were reported to be 42 percent lower than before the workshop. As a result of applying EFT, participants felt they had an improved sense of control and ability to cope with their chronic pain. In the video below, EFT expert Julie Schiffman, teaches you how to use EFT to address chronic pain.

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Choosing the Right Addiction Treatment Center in Nashville

It's easy and typical for most any business to say "We're the best!" and list all the reasons why they are better than their competitor. It's also easy to forget the purpose and culture of your business when marketing it, choosing promotion over intent. I know, because I've done it. It's easy to forget the most important aspect of helping people who are addicted to opioids - help people find an addiction treatment center that's right for them. Why Do We Spend so Much Time and Energy Spreading the Good Word About Nashville Recovery? That's easy - Only 1 of every 10 people who are addicted receive treatment. When people speak of the "opioid epidemic" they assume it's getting under control and that big strides have been made to help those in need. Sadly, we're not even close to solving this problem. There's 10-times more people who are addicted and still have not found treatment. My goal for Nashville Recovery has always been to become a trusted resource for addiction treatment information. And, if by providing free information we can help steer people into opioid recovery, even if it's at another clinic, then we have a responsibility to do so. One of the reasons we spend so much time and energy marketing Nashville Recovery is because there are still millions of people who don't know this type of recovery exists. They have no idea that Suboxone can eliminate withdrawals, allow them to continue working, keep them with their family, and start them on a road to living clean and sober for the rest of their life. Suboxone is by far the best and easiest solution for overcoming opioid addiction, and I say that from my personal experience taking Suboxone. Suboxone is a miracle and it saved my life.

My Two Week Search for an Addiction Treatment Center in January 2014

In January 2014 I was in a very bad place. I had gone to a "top 5" inpatient treatment center and was relapsing week after week, over and over again. I actually lost count as to how many times I relapsed. I felt like a total failure. I let me down, my family down, my work was suffering, my son was starting to ignore me, my wife was ready to leave... I was completely hopeless. I assumed it was my lack of willpower that was keeping me addicted to opioids. I had no idea that addiction is a disease, and that the "choice" to quit had been taken away from me the very first day I took opioids. I'm just one of the lucky ones who found a remedy taking hydrocodone, oxycodone and OxyContin. At first, narcotic pain pills solved all of my problems: Eliminated my back pain Gave me motivation Made me feel like I fit in Gave me energy (weird, right?) When I took opioids I'd get a huge boost of energy. And, I was taking over 200mg of oxycodone every day. Most people will take 5-10mg of oxy and they're ready to lay down and go to sleep. Not me. I was ready to repaint the whole house every time I took pain pills. Narcotic Pain Pills Solved All of My Problems.... Until They Didn't No matter what I tried, I could not stop taking those damn pills. I tried tapering, and would end up taking even more. I tried stopping cold turkey and would go through a couple days of withdrawals and give in. I tried drinking lots of alcohol to help with the withdrawals, but then I'd get ever more sick, and worse, I'd start desiring cocaine. Talk about a miserable circle of death. I was convinced I needed something in my system at all times to cope with life and avoid withdrawals. I couldn't imagine life WITH PILLS and I couldn't imagine life WITHOUT PILLS I was ready to get help or die. I couldn't imagine life with pills and I couldn't imagine life without pills. Every time I thought about being clean I couldn't help but feel it just wasn't an option for me. I believed in my heart I would always need something, even something small in my system every day just to maintain sanity and not go into withdrawal. I was taking an average of 225mg of oxycodone and OxyContin each day. I did that for three years, and had been taking pills for over 13 years every single day. I was the definition of the word "Addicted". Getting clean was like a mirage. Other people could do it, but not me. I felt I was different somehow. Turns out, I'm just like everyone else - Thank God. I Knew an Outpatient Addiction Treatment Center Was My Only Hope - My Last Resort I spent two weeks visiting outpatient addiction clinics in the Nashville area hoping to find one that provided what I needed to get clean and stay clean: Prescribe Suboxone Provide private therapy A friendly staff that would make me feel good about my recovery and my visits A clean, comfortable, positive atmosphere A doctor that would allow me to take Suboxone for as long as I needed to A doctor that would help me taper slowly and gradually, not abruptly Sadly, I didn't find what I was looking for back in January of 2014. Good Addiction Treatment Centers in Nashville are Finally Here This is usually the place in the article where I tout all of Nashville Recovery's benefits over the other outpatient addiction treatment centers in Nashville. Yet the truth is, there are lots of good addiction treatment centers in Middle Tennessee. Many I would recommend to anyone looking to get clean from their opioid addiction. It Doesn't Matter Where You Go - As Long as You Actually Go - So GO! Like me six years ago, many people don't think or perhaps even know there's a solution for their opioid addiction. They think they're a special case, take too many pills, have used for too long and simply can't be helped. The good news is they're wrong. I won't say all outpatient addiction treatment centers in Nashville are great, but I will say that as long as you find a clinic that is state licensed, provides Suboxone and private therapy, and appear to have your best interests at heart, then you can probably get clean. The Key is Just Getting Started - Choose a Clinic and Go Don't wait - Get started today. Choose a clinic, make the appointment and get going. Even if the clinic you choose isn;t right for you, at least you're taking a step in the right direction. Once you start Suboxone you're probably going to feel a whole lot better and that should buy you some time to hunt for the perfect clinic. Get Started Now. Taking Action is the First Step in Addiction Treatment The truth is, Nashville Recovery IS different than most other addiction treatment centers. Here's a few bullet points to help you compare us to other state licensed addiction treatment centers: We are state licensed. Most addiction treatment centers in Nashville are not state licensed. Being state licensed means we go through annual audits that ensure we are providing the most up to date guidelines and procedures for outstanding opioid recovery) We provide and promote free weekly therapy to all of our clients We are owned by people in recovery. (No one knows addiction like an addict in recovery!) We provide a very positive atmosphere and a staff that's motivational for your recovery We don't judge people. We don't care what you've done in the past. What matters is what you do right now. You've probably had enough people judge you and put you down for your addiction. What if you had a place to go where people lifted you up? Made you feel like a human being and helped you overcome a disease that is taking your life away? That's what we do. We Are Determined to Help You Succeed Nashville Recovery's staff is determined to help you succeed. We provide the education, medicines, therapy, tools, motivation and opportunity to change your life for the better. And, we stick with you for as long as needed, since everyone's path is different. You might need three months or you might need three years. Does it really matter how long it takes if it changes your life forever? We provide recovery for as long as you need it, we won't tell you when to stop or when to taper. It's totally up to you. If you would like to try Nashville Recovery, you can schedule a phone or video appointment today and begin taking Suboxone immediately. Weekly phone, video and clinic therapy is provided at no additional charge to all clients. Addiction treatment via telemedicine has made opioid recovery faster, easier and more affordable than ever before. You simply can't choose a better time to start addiction treatment then right now. Read the full article